Blondshell Needed to Find Her Voice — In More Ways Than One — Before Releasing Her Debut Album

The Project

Blondshell arrived April 7 on Partisan via Knitting Factory. and included the artist’s 2022 debut single “Olympus.”

The Origin

Sabrina Teitelbaum wanted to be a singer since she was a kid growing up in Manhattan. In 2015, she moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California’s Popular Music Program, and eventually launched a solo pop project called Baum. But it wasn’t until she wrote the broody and slow-burning “Olympus” that her career clicked, and Blondshell was born. Producer Yves Rothman encouraged her to write more songs in the same raw and rock-inspired style, which she recalls felt “intimidating” at first. But the songs, most of which make up Blondshell, tumbled out quickly. “It was just obvious to me that this stuff was more who I am,” she says now.

The Sound

Teitelbaum was raised on rock greats like The Rolling Stones and is a big fan of The National (she says the band’s black-and-white album art for Trouble Will Find Me inspired her own debut cover). At the same time, having grown up in the 2000s, she was listening to pop icons like Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson, Gwen Stefani, “and all these people who had higher belting ranges,” she recalls — adding that for a long time, she thought that she had to sing that way, too. 

It took a song like the confessional “Sepsis,” one of her favorite songs to perform live, to make her rethink that approach. “It’s just in a good place for my voice,” she says of the track. “And when I started writing the album, particularly with ‘Sepsis,’ I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t have to do that. I’m just gonna sing in the most comfortable part of my voice.’ It’s fun to sing that one because it’s just easy.”

The Record

Blondshell had a “relaxing celebration” when her album arrived, performing at Amoeba on release night and heading to the beach the following day. Blondshell debuted at No. 88 on Billboard’s Top Current Album Sales chart, becoming her first entry on any tally. Of signing with an indie label, she says “I didn’t wanna press that button that was like, ‘This is exactly who I’m gonna be for the rest of my career.’ I really wanted the freedom to change that up … I’ve been thinking about, ‘What did I bring in as references for this album?’ And it was a lot of 90s guitar driven music. I am always gonna have that as a reference, because that’s the music that I love.”

The Breakthrough

Though Blondshell only debuted in 2022, the artist says getting to this point – where in recent months she’s played her favorite venue The Fonda and made her late night television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon – has required years of work: “First [it was], ‘How do I even get on Spotify? How do I meet producers and how do I go to sessions?’ Just years of step-by-step. And then, ‘What do I wanna sound like as a performer? What do I want my show to look like?’

“I was getting kind of scared the last couple years because I was like, ‘I don’t know what I would do in a long term kind of way if it wasn’t music,’” she recalls. “I think people put so much pressure on musicians, especially women, to know exactly who you are as an artist at such a young age, and to find success and all these ideas — like, ‘If you’re not having success by the time you’re like 25, then it’s not gonna happen.’ All these messages that got sent while I was growing up were kind of freaking me out for a period of time.” 

The moment that started to shift, she says, was when she played her first show as Blondshell last summer: “That felt like a big moment, because I put ‘Olympus’ out and I think people hadn’t heard that kind of music [from me]. Some of my friends hadn’t heard it, people I had worked with. And then I got to be like, ‘See, I’ve been working really hard at this thing and getting this live show ready,’ and I got to show people.”

The Future

Blondshell is already excited for her next album, on which she wants to be more experimental, while still rooted in rock. She cites PJ Harvey as an artist who’s released successful but “weirder, progressively” indie-rock albums over the course of her career. “I wanna just play around with different structures and stuff like that,” she says.

She’s also taking note of who she believes to be stellar vocalists. “I feel like there’s a lot of artists right now that are really good live,” she says. “That’s the thing I’m looking at in other artists who are ahead of me or further along in their career.” She mentions Ethel Cain and Willow in particular, whose Coachella performances she keeps seeing clips of online. She also mentions a superstar she has been inspired by since she was a kid: Miley Cyrus. “I love her,” says Blondshell. “I was just watching videos of her singing yesterday and it takes so much work to sound that good and to be that consistent.”

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“While you’re in the process of making the music, don’t think about how you’re gonna put it out. Don’t bring the business parts of it into the actual writing. I would say leave those elements – and also leave your expectations about whether or not people will connect to it – outside.”

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“I see a lot of singer-songwriters making indie feel more mainstream right now. And I think guitar music becoming popular again is sort of part of that. I also feel like it’s kind of like, indie sleaze is back. I think people are craving that energy. But I don’t know, I just feel like there’s more space for different kinds of music to be popular on a more mainstream level right now.

But more importantly, there being more room for other types of music than just three genres. And [knowing] your references can be very different. I think people might be surprised that I absolutely love Miley Cyrus. There’s a lot of very indie artists who love her. I saw her on the street once, I had my sister’s dog and she said, ‘Can I say “hi” to the dog?’ And I was like, ‘You’re Miley Cyrus.’ I was with my family and my dad was like, ‘Who is that? You’re blushing.’ I was like, ‘Are you f–king serious? It’s Miley Cyrus, and yeah, I’m blushing. You don’t have to call me out.’ It was kind of iconic of him, actually.”

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